Fairy Lights
by Emmeebee
Summary: Margo reflects on her situation, her friendship with Quentin, and her future. Set immediately after the end of Paper Towns. 'She was like an overanalysed text that had been so imbibed with potential meanings and symbolism that it had lost its original essence.'


A/N: Dad and I watched Paper Towns a few days ago, and it was, predictably, fantastic. I tried to stick to things that were common to both the movie and the book, but it's been ages since I read the novel, so it will may slip into movie-specific land at times.

DFTBA!

If You Dare Challenge – prompt: alone

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Watching Quentin leave was, to Margo's great surprise, actually disappointing. Although she had come to regret letting their friendship slip through her fingers like water, leaving nothing but traces of dampness and a cold sense of loss behind, she had resigned herself to the fact that that was just how things had turned out. To her, they had become nothing but a could-have-been; alternate realities of them might have made it work, but the versions of them that were grounded in that time stream had grown too far apart to ever be romantically compatible. She had encircled herself with mysteries and enigmas and riddles that would take years to unpack and decode, whereas he had become dull and ordinary. They had both embraced their paper lives, but that acceptance had manifested in completely different ways.

But the time they had spent together in Agloe, however fleeting it might have been, had shown her how little she really knew her childhood best friend. She had been right about the fact that he was sweet and insecure, but there was much more to him than that.

After all, the Q that she had known would never have skipped school and driven interstate to find her. _That_ Q would have lamented her sudden absence but, ultimately, would have resigned himself to the idea that it had been orchestrated by forces and movers much more powerful than him. Defined by his passivity, he wouldn't have even been able to contemplate the idea of going after her and _doing_ something about the situation.

But, over the course of their night as avenging ninjas and their time together in the paper town, Q had shown her another version of himself, one that she could see herself actually having fun with. And he seemed to genuinely care about Margo, even if all he could see was the persona she'd carefully constructed like a towering house of cards. It was a shame to part with him before they could explore that potential friendship together, but it was what they both had to do. Her whole life, she had shied away from anything even bordering on the prescriptive. She was a free spirit, as they said, bucking rules and directives wherever she went. The fact that Jase and Becca had shredded her perfect, enigmatic paper life only augmented her need to escape anything that confined her. But, this time, she thought it might acceptable to embrace an inevitability. Quentin had to go back to his life of paper and see if he could find meaning there, whereas she had to look for it within herself.

Life, she had determined, was made of endless possibilities. It was like someone had come through and strung up a bunch of fairy lights so that they created a labyrinth of sparkles for people to play around with. Each maze was personalised for the specific person, with the colours and configurations depending on their respective backgrounds and situations. Yet, somehow, the playgrounds and circuits overlapped one another, creating an interlocking network of lights and possibilities. Every time one person made a decision, it affected the overall balance of the labyrinth, reducing the range of potentials available for themselves and for others to explore. Sometimes, a single choice could even cause entire chains of lights to flicker out of existence.

Her decision to shroud herself in mystery and allure had pulled her towards the popular crowd and away from Quentin. At that point in their journey, there were no pathways to follow that would lead them back together. His string of lights was leading him to (hopefully exciting) new adventures at college, while hers had led her directly into a brick wall. Left with nowhere else to go, she'd had to choose between following the angle of refraction, wherein she'd have continued with her paper life and paper dreams, and finding a new path to take.

So it was time for a time out. She was like an overanalysed text that had been so imbibed with potential meanings and symbolism that it had lost its original essence. If she were to ever find that core again, she needed to deconstruct and put aside all of the smoke and mirrors she'd amassed around herself and find what was left at the end of everything. Then, perhaps, she would be able to start building herself and her life back up again, equipped to choose a string of lights that suited her rather than just the image of her.

Their paths might cross again one day – in fact, she rather thought she'd like to make sure they did – but she doubted they would intertwine in the way Q had apparently always wanted them to.

 _Then again,_ she thought as she stared out at the bleak landscape and smiled, _who knows?_


End file.
